The Duties Of Dads Series

A teacher took her class of young boys and girls to the zoo where

they were seeing many animals for the first time. They came to one

large enclosed area, and the teacher pointed to the graceful

inhabitants and said, "Children, that is what your mother always calls

your father." One little guy in disbelief said, "Don't tell me that is a

louse!" Sometimes that girl that married dear old dad is not very

complimentary, and often times children can be very embarrassing in

letting this truth be known.

The fact is, fathers are a very abused and degraded class of

people. Adlai Stevenson in a speech before the National Father's Day

committee in 1961 said, "There was a time when father amounted to

something in the United States..... In recent years, however,

especially since World War II, father has come upon sorry times. He

is the but of the comic strips; he is the boob of the radio and TV

serials; and the favorite stooge of all our professional comedians. In

short, life with father seems to have degenerated into a continuous

sequence of disrespect or tolerance at best."

Obviously there are many poor specimens of fatherhood that

deserve condemnation, and even contempt, but this is true of every

class of people, including mothers. Yet few, if any, dare to express

disrespect for mothers, but there is no hesitation when it comes to

fathers. Mother has it all over dad when it comes to poetry and

praise. For example, in the hymnal we use we have several special

hymns for mothers, but for Father's Day there is only Faith Of Our

Fathers, which does not refer to our literal fathers at all, but to our

fathers in the faith. Fatherhood in hymnology is just generally

ignored, and this is true in spite of the fact that the Bible supports the

exclamation of Wordsworth who said, "Father! To God Himself we

cannot give a holier name."

Clovis Chappell, the well-known Methodist preacher and author of

dozens of books, says he searched for some Father's Day songs and

could find only two, and both of them were negative. One was

Everybody Works But Father, and the other went like this:

Dad, dad, dad, the dear old worthless geezer,

The fusses I have had with that old patience teaser!

He lacks the spirit of a mouse,

Most anyone can down him.

We let him hang around the house,

Tis cheaper than to drown him.

In many families the father is little more than a necessary nuisance

handy to have around when something has to be fixed.

Father is a fixture, much needed in the home,

Although he wears no halo above a balding dome.

As general fixer-upper he makes a handsome bluff.

There's nothing he won't tackle-if pestered long enough.

We could go on looking at the negative aspects of fatherhood, but

it will be more profitable to turn our attention to the positive

possibilities of fatherhood. The negative is real, but it is one of those

aspects of reality that ought not to be, but which will cease to be until

fatherhood is restored to a place of respect. This can only happen as

fathers learn to fulfill their duties as God intended. This is no easy

task, and greater men than any of us have failed. Men of God like Eli

the priest, who sons were blasphemers, and God had to destroy them.

David was a man after God's own heart, and he reached the peak of

success as a soldier, king, and poet, but he was a failure as a father.

In spite of these failures, however, the Bible exalts fatherhood, and

gives the father a place of respect, honor, and influence that is

unsurpassed. Edith Deen in her book Family Living In The Bible

says, "From beginning to end, the Bible depicts fathers as teachers of

their children and guardians of the family's spiritual riches." The

average modern father fails to take this responsibility in the home,

and that is why fatherhood has lost respect. The modern father feels

incapable, inferior, and inadequate for his task. The Expositor's

Bible says, a father who abdicates the throne on which God has set

him, who forgoes the honor which God has given him, or turns it into

dishonor, must one day answer for his base renunciation before the

Eternal Father."

It is important, therefore, that fathers be informed on this job

description. In the passage of the Proverbs we find the essence of the

father's duties. It is a job description for the man who would be a

successful father. Alexander Maclaren wrote, "The precepts of this

passage may be said to sum up the teachings of the whole book of

Proverbs." We can't begin to cover it thoroughly, but we want to